I haven't fallen. My legs are made of lead and ache all the time, my knees round balls of pain, but I have not fallen. My chest is on fire when I breathe and my back corresponds, but I haven't fallen. My stomach is weak and I can't stomach much, yet I've not fallen. But it's getting harder and harder to stand when everything hurts. Everything. My body full of pain that keeps me lying awake late nights, which is when my soul full of pain does it's hardest biting. I'm still standing, but it keeps getting harder.
It's getting harder to smile when I feel so deeply broken inside. Harder to laugh and try to overcome this apathy towards life. Harder to look my family in the eye although I've for once done no wrong. It hurts. Everything, life, it hurts.
I wasn't happy strung out. No matter how delusional I could get, I never believed I was happy. What I got from heroin wasn't happiness, and I didn't use it to be happy. I used it as the painkiller it is. Used it so I had numbness to look forward to no matter how bad life hurt.
I don't know how to explain it to someone who isn't an addict- yes, the drugs made me miserable, but they also made my misery okay. Even though they hurt just like this does, the drugs gave my pain a cause and purpose and the idea that if I ever quit, I could be truly happy and I would feel free- and the promise of numbness until the end. Now I've quit, but the pain hasn't.
I just need one moment, Higher Power, one glimmer that this is worth the constant pain of my broken soul and breaking body. One sign that there is light at the end of this tunnel I have found myself in. The light I was using to guide my way has gone out, I need a new one. The only light I see nearby is flame, and that is what I am running from. The flame is familiar though and growing closer to my consciousness.
Please, give me a sign- and some railings, something strong I can grab to save my life.
Showing posts with label addicted. Show all posts
Showing posts with label addicted. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Craving and Surviving
I've come to a decision. It's one I've been kicking around for awhile, with pressure towards this decision from my mom but still one ultimately only I could make, since it is my throat the pills will be going down. I've decided to take an opiate blocker. Making a commitment. A white pill, made of what is essentially Narcan, same thing used to revive someone from an opiate overdose. Taken daily, it will latch onto the fucking demanding, hungry, ever twisting and scheming opiate receptors in my brain and then block entirely any smack I decide to shoot. And it works, I've (of course) tested it out before. It helped me before and I hope will help me again. It works for 72 hours after each dose, giving me time to stop and think before I act.
That doesn't however prevent me from deciding I'll just shoot crack instead when I want to run from myself; despite the fact that I hate it, I still sometimes decide it's time to see if I like it yet and try again, which always ends in me puking while my ears ring and my heart beats so fast I can barely feel each beat separately, my chest screaming in pain, while swearing to god if I just don't have a heart attack and die I'm never touching cocaine in any form again. The thing with shooting crack versus smoking it is, with smoking, it's hard to overdose. With IV, you don't know it's too much until after you've already shot it, and there have been numerous times where, had I not had smack to slow my heart down again right away, I think I would've collapsed and died. I've also been known to inject diphenhydramine- Benadryl. You could vaccinate me against every known abusable substance on the planet and if I were so inclined, I would still find a way to get high, even if it meant choking myself till I passed out just for the rush that comes before death. That is how sick my brain, at its very core, has become.
So while naltrexone will help, it isn't a magic cure. Either is the Vivitrol shot, given in your ass once a month and supposed to do the same thing naltrexone does- except I had to test that out, too, and a couple days after the shot, my ass still sore, I discovered I am one of that tiny little tenth of a percentage point of people for whom it is totally, absolutely, 100% ineffective. There IS no cure for addiction. This is a fatal motherfucker of a disease it is impossible to ever remove from someone, no matter what Scientology says (been to that treatment center too, it's where my college fund went, and let me tell you, there's no cure to be had there but many, many memories I'd rather not have of some abusive treatment methods- which is why the center I attended was shut down and the directors excommunicated from the Church of Scientology.) This disease will gladly and calmly wait years and years for me to let my guard down and when I do, there will always be a dope dealer down on Peterboro who will help me give my life away again and smile while he does it.
It's up to me to live the life I choose. A friend and brother in arms named Tripp, who is now in prison for dealing meth, made me write on my mirror here at my mom's house "I CHOOSE THE PATH I WALK EACH DAY" and damn if that pseudo brother of mine wasn't dead on. I've looked in that mirror to inject into my neck what probably amounts to multiple kilos of heroin since then and HATED seeing that phrase every single time. Because sick as I am, I am not stupid. I always knew it was true and I was making a choice to push the plunger. Even knowing what choosing not to do dope would mean, the misery of withdrawal, it was still a decision made to start that cycle again after each attempt at sobriety. The decision of using or of cutting myself loose from smack, what I felt for so long (and still feel most hours of the day, though I know it'll pass) was my only tether to the world.
My life, my existence, was as a junkie. Period. I didn't question that, I never asked why me, though I have wished I had a disease with less stigma, like cancer. I didn't stop to think, I just reacted. Pure animal instinct from the deepest reaches of my brain. What will it take to not be sick today and where do I begin going about that task. That was it. Sober moments, even moments on a withdrawal med like subutex or suboxone, were torturous because I knew I would and fully intended to use again at some point. I don't intend to use again now, though, though I am not nearly naive enough to think it could never happen. I'm terrified, honestly old fashioned shaking in my boots waking nightmare terrified, that I'll slip and use again. I need to have 14 days with no opiate use at all in order to start the pills, and every half hour I'm hit with another stomach churning craving out of nowhere. It's hell, it makes the withdrawal I'm still in feel like day three cold turkey kicking, and my mind just spins circles around that image of, say, a filthy rig that MUST be hidden somewhere in my room or the bushes out front or maybe under that one bush round the block from two years ago that might have a cotton with enough dope to feel left in it's plunger cap.
It is absolutely unreal, the power of those cravings. But somewhere, I read that a craving lasts on average 7 to 8 minutes if you don't feed into it. So when my stomach clenches and that picture of needle in vein blood registering plunger depressing hits me out of nowhere, I find a clock to look at. I look at the clock and think, "okay, 8 minutes. Probably more like ten since I'm a really sick one. I can do ten minutes of this, I've done months in jail and kicked cold turkey for days. I can do ten minutes of wanting to snatch the nearest purse and run to my dealer." And it freaking works! It works. I survive. I don't commit a felony, I don't end up dopesick and broke and homeless, and I don't die right then and there from sheer lack of heroin. I survive.
I survive. I have survived a long, long time in a hard, hard lifestyle, one that the president of the USA couldn't survive and I hope never has to. I wouldn't wish what I've survived on my worst enemy. But I survived and am at this point right here, right now, with four days totally opiate free and I think nine or ten days totally heroin free- and for the first time in a very long time, I have every intention of staying as sober as I am right now. Even if it does mean I start crying because one of the 25 cent ghost shrimp I bought today died on the way home, or crying simply because I started crying and then laughing because I can't figure out why I'm crying, and then feeling absolutely nothing for a second before crying again. I feel awkward, totally like a teenager in middle school again, don't know what to do with myself, but I am clean and sober.
I survive, and I am clean and sober. And I will keep surviving no matter what, and someday, I will find myself LIVING again instead of surviving. And that's why I'm clean and sober- because I'm ready to find out what living is like.
That doesn't however prevent me from deciding I'll just shoot crack instead when I want to run from myself; despite the fact that I hate it, I still sometimes decide it's time to see if I like it yet and try again, which always ends in me puking while my ears ring and my heart beats so fast I can barely feel each beat separately, my chest screaming in pain, while swearing to god if I just don't have a heart attack and die I'm never touching cocaine in any form again. The thing with shooting crack versus smoking it is, with smoking, it's hard to overdose. With IV, you don't know it's too much until after you've already shot it, and there have been numerous times where, had I not had smack to slow my heart down again right away, I think I would've collapsed and died. I've also been known to inject diphenhydramine- Benadryl. You could vaccinate me against every known abusable substance on the planet and if I were so inclined, I would still find a way to get high, even if it meant choking myself till I passed out just for the rush that comes before death. That is how sick my brain, at its very core, has become.
So while naltrexone will help, it isn't a magic cure. Either is the Vivitrol shot, given in your ass once a month and supposed to do the same thing naltrexone does- except I had to test that out, too, and a couple days after the shot, my ass still sore, I discovered I am one of that tiny little tenth of a percentage point of people for whom it is totally, absolutely, 100% ineffective. There IS no cure for addiction. This is a fatal motherfucker of a disease it is impossible to ever remove from someone, no matter what Scientology says (been to that treatment center too, it's where my college fund went, and let me tell you, there's no cure to be had there but many, many memories I'd rather not have of some abusive treatment methods- which is why the center I attended was shut down and the directors excommunicated from the Church of Scientology.) This disease will gladly and calmly wait years and years for me to let my guard down and when I do, there will always be a dope dealer down on Peterboro who will help me give my life away again and smile while he does it.
It's up to me to live the life I choose. A friend and brother in arms named Tripp, who is now in prison for dealing meth, made me write on my mirror here at my mom's house "I CHOOSE THE PATH I WALK EACH DAY" and damn if that pseudo brother of mine wasn't dead on. I've looked in that mirror to inject into my neck what probably amounts to multiple kilos of heroin since then and HATED seeing that phrase every single time. Because sick as I am, I am not stupid. I always knew it was true and I was making a choice to push the plunger. Even knowing what choosing not to do dope would mean, the misery of withdrawal, it was still a decision made to start that cycle again after each attempt at sobriety. The decision of using or of cutting myself loose from smack, what I felt for so long (and still feel most hours of the day, though I know it'll pass) was my only tether to the world.
My life, my existence, was as a junkie. Period. I didn't question that, I never asked why me, though I have wished I had a disease with less stigma, like cancer. I didn't stop to think, I just reacted. Pure animal instinct from the deepest reaches of my brain. What will it take to not be sick today and where do I begin going about that task. That was it. Sober moments, even moments on a withdrawal med like subutex or suboxone, were torturous because I knew I would and fully intended to use again at some point. I don't intend to use again now, though, though I am not nearly naive enough to think it could never happen. I'm terrified, honestly old fashioned shaking in my boots waking nightmare terrified, that I'll slip and use again. I need to have 14 days with no opiate use at all in order to start the pills, and every half hour I'm hit with another stomach churning craving out of nowhere. It's hell, it makes the withdrawal I'm still in feel like day three cold turkey kicking, and my mind just spins circles around that image of, say, a filthy rig that MUST be hidden somewhere in my room or the bushes out front or maybe under that one bush round the block from two years ago that might have a cotton with enough dope to feel left in it's plunger cap.
It is absolutely unreal, the power of those cravings. But somewhere, I read that a craving lasts on average 7 to 8 minutes if you don't feed into it. So when my stomach clenches and that picture of needle in vein blood registering plunger depressing hits me out of nowhere, I find a clock to look at. I look at the clock and think, "okay, 8 minutes. Probably more like ten since I'm a really sick one. I can do ten minutes of this, I've done months in jail and kicked cold turkey for days. I can do ten minutes of wanting to snatch the nearest purse and run to my dealer." And it freaking works! It works. I survive. I don't commit a felony, I don't end up dopesick and broke and homeless, and I don't die right then and there from sheer lack of heroin. I survive.
I survive. I have survived a long, long time in a hard, hard lifestyle, one that the president of the USA couldn't survive and I hope never has to. I wouldn't wish what I've survived on my worst enemy. But I survived and am at this point right here, right now, with four days totally opiate free and I think nine or ten days totally heroin free- and for the first time in a very long time, I have every intention of staying as sober as I am right now. Even if it does mean I start crying because one of the 25 cent ghost shrimp I bought today died on the way home, or crying simply because I started crying and then laughing because I can't figure out why I'm crying, and then feeling absolutely nothing for a second before crying again. I feel awkward, totally like a teenager in middle school again, don't know what to do with myself, but I am clean and sober.
I survive, and I am clean and sober. And I will keep surviving no matter what, and someday, I will find myself LIVING again instead of surviving. And that's why I'm clean and sober- because I'm ready to find out what living is like.
Monday, August 12, 2013
Rebuilding Begins When My Arson Ends
I've spent so many years circling in the clouds, searching for life as it is meant to be lived, soaring on false wings given by heroin. But it turns out that all along, the life I was searching for was never one I could see from the air. I needed to land and breathe sober air and take sober steps before I could see that life? Life IS that pain I run from. Life is that sadness, sorrow, regret and fear. But life is also moments of joy, of peace, of sometimes feeling nothing but okay. Life is placing one foot in front of the other with no chemical buffer between my feet and the ground and knowing that the simple fact of my sobriety does not entitle me to anything more or anything less than anyone else gets- life as it is, with it's flaws and uncertainties and pains and triumphs. Because that is what life is, that is what living entails.
I sit here with a pair of days with absolutely no opiates at all in my system, after taking the last tiny bit of my suboxone the other day. No suboxone, no smack, no methadone or even kratom. I'm in withdrawal, my entire body hurts, my stomach is revolting and threatening to rip it's way out of my abdomen altogether, but I've no desire to walk away from where I am right now, both physically and emotionally, because I want what lies on the other side of these last couple days sick. I have an abscess on my upper arm that I'm fighting a losing battle against with double doses of three different antibiotics, and one in my neck I'm more hopeful will respond to the pills, and even that pain is welcome, because it is REAL. I've made it through the seizures, I've made it through the sleeplessness. I have made it through the daily moments where I would gladly and without second thought cut out and sell my own kidneys for relief of this sickness. I know $20 would relieve this sickness, but then what does that do for the deeper root of the sickness, my disease? It would set me back behind that wall between me and life as it is meant to be lived, a wall I was so sure, so absolutely, entirely certain, I would never see this side of again.
I've been absent here and on my corresponding Instagram, which is apparently now famous thanks to the way viral news reports have spread about the community of #junkiesofig, because my phone was stolen, ripped out of my hand at the bus stop. At the bus stop, on the way to go meet my dealer relapse. My ability to contact my dealer- not a dopehouse, he is a call and meet dealer- that day and get him to meet me at the bus stop went with my phone. Funny how things work sometimes. Since then, I've been simply too sick or too weak to write or think or do much not dictated by my most primitive brain functions. I've managed to take care of what needs taken care of thanks to one incredible and absolutely priceless thing- my mom. My mom, who I thought I'd lost forever, though not physically, emotionally. She said, the day I told her I was done, that this is it and I'm not using again, that she had no hope for me. That I would be dead in a gutter someday anyway and me pretending to try just hurt her too much, that she had detached. And I could not for one second blame her or feel anything but absolute shame. Shame, but also a determination to prove her wrong. I think she sees it now as I do, I think she sees the change in my soul I felt that day I slipped up and used last week, the day I knew the drugs were the same but I am different now. And she has been there for me. She has seen the choices I've made and the determination to not go back, to not let myself fall.
Who knows what next week will bring. Who knows if I will even be sober tomorrow. At this point, I don't even think whatever gods there are out there that have kept me alive this long know what my future holds. But I do know what it felt like the last time I shot dope. How instead of relief, it was as though I'd injected fire into my very soul itself, burning myself down from the heart on out. The shame, the instant wish that I could just pull the plunger back and undo what I had just done, that desire for a do-over I've felt so many times in my years as a junkie. I know it felt all wrong, and it wasn't a change in the drugs that made it feel that way. It was a change in me, a change in my heart and soul and knowing for a fact that I have found a better way.
I don't need to live like a rat anymore. I don't need to live as a zombie. I don't need to be a bottomless junkie. I can make my bottom wherever I choose to get off the sinking ship. And I'm off the ship today. I'm on land, though it is still just the very edge of a beach shrouded in mist, the rest of which I cannot see and don't know what is around the next chunk of fog, but I know I am in the right place right now. I know I am walking the right road right now. This is not easy and it hurts like nothing else and sometimes it feels like I am burning and engulfed in flames still, but I know, I KNOW these flames will burn themselves out. I am going to build my next life of brick, quit relying on the flimsy and flammable matchsticks I've always used before in my rebuilding attempts.
The city of Detroit burned almost to the ground three times in her history. I have burned my life almost to the ground countless times. Detroit rebuilt and is rebuilding again from a different type of fire today. I rebuilt, and am rebuilding again today. My self-arson is under control today. I am going to make mistakes. I am going to hurt beyond anything I can imagine. I am going to cry, I am going to laugh, I am going to feel joy about something other than free smack. I am going to fucking LIVE. I don't know if this is "it," if I'll never be strung out again, and frankly, I couldn't give a shit less. Today I'm not strung out, today I'm not giving my life away to heroin. Today is all I have and today?
Today, I am going to be okay.
I sit here with a pair of days with absolutely no opiates at all in my system, after taking the last tiny bit of my suboxone the other day. No suboxone, no smack, no methadone or even kratom. I'm in withdrawal, my entire body hurts, my stomach is revolting and threatening to rip it's way out of my abdomen altogether, but I've no desire to walk away from where I am right now, both physically and emotionally, because I want what lies on the other side of these last couple days sick. I have an abscess on my upper arm that I'm fighting a losing battle against with double doses of three different antibiotics, and one in my neck I'm more hopeful will respond to the pills, and even that pain is welcome, because it is REAL. I've made it through the seizures, I've made it through the sleeplessness. I have made it through the daily moments where I would gladly and without second thought cut out and sell my own kidneys for relief of this sickness. I know $20 would relieve this sickness, but then what does that do for the deeper root of the sickness, my disease? It would set me back behind that wall between me and life as it is meant to be lived, a wall I was so sure, so absolutely, entirely certain, I would never see this side of again.
I've been absent here and on my corresponding Instagram, which is apparently now famous thanks to the way viral news reports have spread about the community of #junkiesofig, because my phone was stolen, ripped out of my hand at the bus stop. At the bus stop, on the way to go meet my dealer relapse. My ability to contact my dealer- not a dopehouse, he is a call and meet dealer- that day and get him to meet me at the bus stop went with my phone. Funny how things work sometimes. Since then, I've been simply too sick or too weak to write or think or do much not dictated by my most primitive brain functions. I've managed to take care of what needs taken care of thanks to one incredible and absolutely priceless thing- my mom. My mom, who I thought I'd lost forever, though not physically, emotionally. She said, the day I told her I was done, that this is it and I'm not using again, that she had no hope for me. That I would be dead in a gutter someday anyway and me pretending to try just hurt her too much, that she had detached. And I could not for one second blame her or feel anything but absolute shame. Shame, but also a determination to prove her wrong. I think she sees it now as I do, I think she sees the change in my soul I felt that day I slipped up and used last week, the day I knew the drugs were the same but I am different now. And she has been there for me. She has seen the choices I've made and the determination to not go back, to not let myself fall.
Who knows what next week will bring. Who knows if I will even be sober tomorrow. At this point, I don't even think whatever gods there are out there that have kept me alive this long know what my future holds. But I do know what it felt like the last time I shot dope. How instead of relief, it was as though I'd injected fire into my very soul itself, burning myself down from the heart on out. The shame, the instant wish that I could just pull the plunger back and undo what I had just done, that desire for a do-over I've felt so many times in my years as a junkie. I know it felt all wrong, and it wasn't a change in the drugs that made it feel that way. It was a change in me, a change in my heart and soul and knowing for a fact that I have found a better way.
I don't need to live like a rat anymore. I don't need to live as a zombie. I don't need to be a bottomless junkie. I can make my bottom wherever I choose to get off the sinking ship. And I'm off the ship today. I'm on land, though it is still just the very edge of a beach shrouded in mist, the rest of which I cannot see and don't know what is around the next chunk of fog, but I know I am in the right place right now. I know I am walking the right road right now. This is not easy and it hurts like nothing else and sometimes it feels like I am burning and engulfed in flames still, but I know, I KNOW these flames will burn themselves out. I am going to build my next life of brick, quit relying on the flimsy and flammable matchsticks I've always used before in my rebuilding attempts.
The city of Detroit burned almost to the ground three times in her history. I have burned my life almost to the ground countless times. Detroit rebuilt and is rebuilding again from a different type of fire today. I rebuilt, and am rebuilding again today. My self-arson is under control today. I am going to make mistakes. I am going to hurt beyond anything I can imagine. I am going to cry, I am going to laugh, I am going to feel joy about something other than free smack. I am going to fucking LIVE. I don't know if this is "it," if I'll never be strung out again, and frankly, I couldn't give a shit less. Today I'm not strung out, today I'm not giving my life away to heroin. Today is all I have and today?
Today, I am going to be okay.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Homeless! We Are Homeward Bound!
Home is where the heart is. But what of a heart that has no building in particular it belongs to? What of the heart that feels home is a whole city, or the embrace of another heart, fallible and fragile as that heart itself? What of the hearts who travel and ramble and wander and hike, who never sit still and allow moss to grow upon their smooth and well worn stones? What of the hearts that know no walls, no roofs or floors or confines of house? What of the hearts sleeping under open sky, with stars bright above but no shelter from the cold? And what of the hearts who having lost home, are homeless and hopeless but fighting on still? Shall those hearts ever rest or is rest for the wicked, for good indeed these hearts are at their core? Shall those hearts find peace, settle old scores, win the hand, or are they forever to exist in pain as though damned? Those hearts did no crime, broke no law, never drove a knife home nor shattered a jaw. Those hearts are simple and tough and soothing yet sore, with rage and loss around their good core. Those hearts fix you with a gaze and you are never the same, as before when you thought you were best at life's game. Those hearts are the heroes, the warriors, the braves; those hearts they refuse to exist forever as slaves. Free of chain, free of shackle, free of shame, a free radical, these hearts they break but seem always to mend! They are strong, they are smart, they know love with no end! They are the future, ignorance of which we pretend! These hearts, they are stunning, they are bruised but not broken. They are the ones who know the heavens have spoken. Living life how they choose with no tethers to home, these hearts are the ones who've escaped from the gloam. Hail the hearts with no home, with no ceiling nor sink, hail those hearts living freer than most often think. Hail the half broken half bloodied hearts of the damned, the hearts no one from the outside shall ever understand. Those hearts surround you on the streets every day; tis up to you to live life another way. For the homeless, we are homeward bound! Even in our poverty we shall not drown.
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